Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

« Older Entries

The threat of American intransigence.

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Former New Brunswick Premier and former Ambassador to Washington Frank McKenna came to Babel the other day. He told a rapt audience of TD Bank customers about the two greatest threats to world peace and prosperity. From the way he explained the two scenarios, it was hard to say which was worse.

Since the concern about Iran is over nuclear weapons controlled by a theocracy (a country ruled by religion), he gave top billing to the Persians. People in the west do not appreciate the capabilities of Iran and believe the nuclear threat is a long way away. The problem is that Iran can easily turn off the tap on about 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply by simply closing the Strait of Hormuz. The United States would be the country hardest hit by that embargo and that country would have to go to war with Iran. In turn, America’s ally, Israel, would be bombed into a nuclear wasteland unless Israel can take out Iran’s nuclear capability first. It is a chilling story.

Luckily, McKenna believes the current peace feelers to the west from the Iranian leadership are genuine. He feels sure that tensions can be eased if the Iranians see the benefits in cooling the threats to their Middle East neighbours.

His other scenario offered fewer solutions. As the former ambassador to Washington, he is well tuned in to American politics. He sees the intransigence of American politicians as extremely serious. He explains that no matter who wins the White House, the House of Representatives or the Senate later this year, the parties will remain locked in vicious combat over taxes and spending. He sees the politicians as so entrenched in their ideological positions that they could cause a deadlock that would throw the U.S. and then the rest of the world into a bottomless recession.

He says Canada is being caught up in the U.S.problems whether we like it or not. At the same time, he sees Canadian politicians as far more flexible. He noted that we have a former New Democrat running the federal Liberal Party, a former Liberal running the New Democrats and Mr. Harper changing Canada into an oil producing country—if he can ever get the oil south to the Texas refineries or to the east or west coasts. Mr. Mckenna sees the pipeline problems as easily solved.

Mr. McKenna is obviously enjoying his role spreading sunshine for the bank. And the bank customers certainly enjoyed his presentation. He did it with humour and a confident delivery. We should also mention that the bank served coffee and cookies. The cookies were very good!

-30-

Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: ,
Posted in American Politics, New, World Politics | Comments Off

Political hypocrisy is always with us.

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

This is an old story. It was over 30 years ago and the head table group was meeting in a room off the ballroom in the Sheraton Hotel across from Toronto city hall. An Ontario cabinet minister and the writer were enjoying a drink and having an interesting discussion about when we expected to have casinos in Ontario. At the time, we were just starting to have ‘charity casinos’ in the province and there was concern about where these events were headed.

We were joined by a young politician from North York who had already cut a swath for himself in municipal politics and was soon to be named Metropolitan Toronto chairman. “You are discussing one of my favourite topics,” he told us. “In fact, I just got back from a weekend junket to Las Vegas.”

“Well Paul,” I said to him, “We’re discussing having casinos in Toronto so that you do not have to go so far. How do you feel about having casinos here?”

Today, Paul Godfrey is chair of Ontario Lottery and Gaming and he might not be amused to be reminded of what he said as a politician, so long ago. Suffice to say, he rejected the idea of having casinos in Toronto. It was political hypocrisy at its finest! (Political hypocrisy is when you put down the voters as needing protection when what they really need is protection from this type of politician.)

But he is hardly alone in that. Toronto city hall has politicians today calling for a vote on whether to allow casinos. Where do they get off telling Torontonians if they can go to a casino? Where do they get off, telling us we do not want the jobs, the attraction for tourism and the opportunity to have a world-class casino?

While they are at it, maybe they should also have a vote on which churches we should go to, whether convenience stores should sell beer or if they should ban lotteries. There is no end to opportunities for the bigots and hypocrites among us to make sure people do not do anything they dislike—or are just being hypocrites about.

It seems the Ford brothers in Toronto might just be the rare exception as politicians. They might have some really strange ideas for Toronto transit and to be very bad at voter relations but you know that, with them, what you see is what you get—all 550 pounds (250 kilos) of them!

-30-

Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , ,
Posted in Municipal Politics, New, Provincial Politics | Comments Off

Has the Liberal leadership race started?

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

The news media is panicking.  They are concerned that the Liberal Party of Canada has no contenders for its upcoming leadership convention scheduled for sometime in 2013.  They figure Bob Rae is the logical winner because he is the interim leader. When Rae took on the interim leadership, he promised to not run at the upcoming convention. Do they think the Liberal Party would want someone who did not keep his word?

There is no question but Bob Rae is doing a good job as interim leader.  He is keeping the caucus focused, he is speaking out effectively for the Liberal Party and he has kept the party in a position of de facto opposition while the official NDP opposition fights its own leadership contest.  He has impressed a lot of people with his skill at the interim job.

But that is all it can be. There is a solid core within the Liberal Party who would never accept him as full-time leader.  It is not just the fact that he was NDP Premier in Ontario in the 1990s but he showed a serious lack of political sensitivity back then and it is not something that people can really learn. You have got it or you have not got it.  Bob, nice guy that he is, has not got it. He makes a great interim leader.  That is as good as he gets.

Bob Rae sees himself as a career politician. And he is. In that regard, he is very much like Bob Nixon, Leader of the Ontario Liberals back in the 1960s and 1970s. Bob Nixon was Treasurer in the Peterson Government in the 1980s. He brought the same love of the political scene to his work for the party as Bob Rae. The difference is that Bob Nixon is probably the best Premier of Ontario that we almost had.

When the media think that Bob Rae has some kind of a lock on the Liberal Party leadership, they just show how little they know about the party. Do they really think that Martha Hall Findlay is out for the count? She is one of the smartest and most determined women in Canadian politics and if she ever gets the kind of political management of her campaign that she needs, she could be almost unbeatable for the leadership.

If the media people have never heard of MP Dominic LeBlanc from New Brunswick, their research on up and coming Liberal leadership prospects is sadly lacking.  LeBlanc needs to spread his wings and get out and meet his party more often but he carries large credentials and four winning elections in his party pack.

And we have not even considered MP Justin Trudeau, who is wisely holding himself off from being a contender.  A lot can happen in the next year and many Liberals are waiting for him to answer the call.

We could keep going and come up with five or six good potential candidates.  The leadership of this party is no small prize.  It is a party Bob Rae is helping to rebuild and he will earn our approval for that—just not the leadership.

-30-

Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , ,
Posted in Federal Politics, New | Comments Off

When the NDP joins the Liberals.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

A Liberal and NDP marriage is going to happen and we will be better pleased with the new party if we start to plan now.  It is not something we should do on the fly.  That creates bad marriages.  What needs to happen first is that we get the leadership issues in each of the parties out of the way.  We need a symbolic bride and groom for this arrangement who we can all respect the morning after.  And we need a wedding planner—probably a committee.  The nuptials are too damn important to let the bride and groom screw up the arrangements.

The NDP are picking their new leader first.  The fact that the NDP will be in the role of the bride in this arranged nuptial does not mean that it necessarily needs to be a female leader but it would help.  The role needs the skills of a woman.  The key is to be willing and alluring but not to forget the substantial dowry of voters being brought to the marriage.  The NDP leader has to be able to negotiate with the Liberals and a union negotiator certainly has a leg up in that regard.

That puts Peggy Nash in a strong position and tells us that it is definitely not in any of Thomas Mulcair’s skill sets.  Brian Topp, as a front man for Ed Broadbent as Edgar Bergen, is not in the running either.  Neither is politician Paul Dewar able to do the job.  He needs more experience than he got at his mother’s knee.  A personal favourite is Nathan Cohen from B.C. but he might be considered too easy as he is willing to do the party connection without the sanctity of marriage.

Another advantage for the NDP in this marriage is that the new NDP leader will have time to become a known quantity before the Liberals choose a new leader.  And we can only speculate on who will be in the running for the Liberal hot spot two years from now.  The worst case would be if Bob Rae reneges on his promise not to seek the Liberal leadership.  That would have Stephen Harper running attack ads referring to the marriage of the parties as a same-sex marriage. (He is narrow-minded about that.)

Another problem on the Liberal side is that there are few left-of-centre Liberals left in the House of Commons.  Since few were running, more than a million of our Liberal voters switched to the NDP in the last election.  The Liberal Party might have to broaden its leadership search outside the current crop of MPs.  The new Liberal leader has to acknowledge the need for the marriage with the NDP and speak for the compatibility of Social Democratic and Liberal ideals and policies.

But today, the parties need to be finding suitable wedding planners.

-30-

Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , ,
Posted in Federal Politics, New | Comments Off

Think as a loser: be a loser.

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

One of the resolutions that will be debated at the Liberal Party of Canada gathering starting January 13 is to promote preferential voting.  This is a system where voters indicate their first, second and third choice and the tally of votes is based on who would (mathematically) win more than 50 per cent of the vote, should the last place candidates be dropped and their second choices be given the vote.  The idea is to ensure that the final victor is someone who is preferred by more than 50 per cent of the voters.  And yet, they are really indicating who they do not want.

It is a losers’ strategy.  It says that those voting for the resolution think our first-past-the-post system does not work.  In reality, it works too well for losers.  If Canadians were voting for the Prime Minister (President or whatever) on a one-person-one-vote basis across the country, there could be a very good case made for a run-off election if no candidate received at least 50 per cent of the vote.  The voter could then (maybe reluctantly) vote for a second choice.

But no matter how you do the mathematics of the voting, the preferential ballot is just a step away from proportional voting.  Proportional voting is the anathema of our electoral system.  From the time when voters had to shout out their preference at a town meeting to the coming time of Internet voting, our system has been built on the assumption of the knowledgeable voter.  It has also been based on the interaction of politician and voter.  It is an ignorant and lazy voter who will vote for a person not bothering to learn about them or to meet them.

The trend towards voting for the party leader without caring who the local candidate might be is also in defiance of the opportunities offered by our system.  Better than any other political system, Canadian politics has long offered the citizen direct involvement in choosing candidates and choosing the elected member of municipal, provincial or federal government.  And we can do it without fear of corruption or coercion.

As we said, those voting in favour of preferential balloting at the Liberal January conclave are supporting a losers’ strategy.  It is saying that you want to be elected—even if by being the second choice of the voters.  Would you really want to hold your head high and serve in government for four years because you were second choice?  What shallow person would want that?  If you think as a loser, you will be one.

-30-

Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags:
Posted in New, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Denying devolution.

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

In biology, devolution is the return of a specie to an earlier form.  In politics, it is the return of power to its original roots.  It is what the Liberal Party of Canada has to do to become an effective power again in federal politics.  And it will—if the people who think they run the party would just get out of the way and let it happen.

But they do not seem to be willing.  Whether from obduracy or ignorance, the powers that be in the Liberal Party are resisting the changes in party governance that are desperately needed to revitalize the party.  These people want to keep a top-down management of the party until the last Liberal leaves the Parliament Buildings.

By far the most widely discussed resolution slated for debate at the party’s biennial conference, slated for January 13 to 15, is the resolution on democratic renewal of the party.  It has been obvious to Liberal Party members for quite some time that the basic problem is the top-down management of the party from Ottawa.  It simply does not work.  This top-down approach has destroyed three party leaders in a row.  It has destroyed almost 100 riding associations across Canada and more are heading for trouble.  Never before has it been so obvious that management of the party from Ottawa does not work.

And yet, party management is trying to delay democratic reform.  This resolution they wrote for the party to vote on in January would stall any change in how the party functions for at least three years.  In three years, the party will have chosen a new leader and be heading into a federal election against Harper’s Tories.  Defeating Harper will take precedence over party reform.  Another report on reform will be shelved.

The answer is that if people want to debate the issues, no more than a year should be allowed for all discussion.  An all-member Internet vote can then be held on any proposed changes.  And, if all else fails, party members have to make it clear to all candidates that they will only vote for a leadership candidate who makes a pledge to only use the power to appoint candidates where there is no active electoral district association.

There are few periods when a party can truly renew itself.  The Liberal Party has that time while Mr. Harper shows Canadians his real intentions.  It is giving Liberals a chance to examine where they are going and how they want to get there.  They might be surprised at the answers.

-30-

Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: ,
Posted in Federal Politics, New | Comments Off

Bob Rae does not do economics.

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae spoke to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto this Wednesday.  We know it was a Liberal speech because he quoted Wilfrid Laurier.  Anyone looking for a liberal insight into solving the current world economic situation was bound to be disappointed.

The last lesson in economics that Rae ever listened to was from Thomas d’Aquino, when d’Aquino headed up the Business Council on National Issues in the 1990s.  At the time, Bob Rae was the New Democratic Premier of Ontario.  After listening to d’Aquino, Bob Rae soon became the ex-premier of Ontario.  He tried to sell his Social Contract to NDP supporters and they turned on him.

As economics and socialism are not compatible sciences, Bob Rae became a Liberal and offered to replace Paul Martin as Liberal leader in 2006.  The road from Martin to Rae was fraught with too many hurdles and Rae came third to Dion and Ignatieff.  When he won a seat in Parliament in 2008, he again put his name forward for the leadership but the party executive chose Michael Ignatieff.  When Ignatieff’s leadership garnered fewer seats than the NDP in the 2011 election, Rae won the interim leadership by default.

But being interim leader does not guarantee instant liberal wisdom.  It did him little good to heap praises on Paul Martin’s management of Canada’s books in the 1990s.  Martin balanced the country’s books on the backs of the poor, the unemployed and by cutting provincial transfer payments.  While he was at it, Martin burned the red book and blocked all the liberal promises of the Chrétien Liberals.  Some role model!

Rae’s speech in Toronto called for a simpler, clearer tax code.  And he wants to have a comprehensive review of tax spending to make sure we are getting value for the money.  He does not think we are right now. You can hear that in any Conservative economic speech.

Rae complains that the Liberals find they are competing with two other parties with simplistic messages.  Bob needs to keep thinking.  Eventually, he will come up with some simplistic messages for us.

It was very much a kitchen sink type of speech.  There were not many economic clichés left out.  One good idea that was lost in the speech said we had to support innovation.  It was too bad that Rae had no idea how to do that.  Instead of beggaring our municipalities with debt through infrastructure programs, Canada should have realized that it could shovel more liquidity through the economy faster by a mix of programs that put money in the hands of entrepreneurs.  You do not do that through tax credits alone.

-30-

Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Federal Politics | Comments Off

If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts.

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

This writer was wrong.  There, it is admitted.  We are the only blog writer in Ontario who has no excuse.  We actually thought that Premier McGuinty and his Liberals could hold on to a slim majority in the October 6 election.

But what do we know?  Talking to people in different parts of Ontario over the last week, we heard nothing but complaints.  Many people with normally strong views admitted that they had not yet made up their minds.  They would discuss their leanings and then ask for our views. A few who usually voted Liberal were thinking of voting Green as a protest.  They admitted it was a wasted vote but they felt that no party was on their side.

That was the most honest comment we got.  People felt that no party was speaking for them.  They watch costs climb and know that there is nobody to speak out about it.  And they are not concerned about luxuries.  They mention the price of bread, a pound of butter, ground beef, lettuce.  And have you priced celery lately?  People shudder at the price of a litre of gasoline and know that the Harper government will do nothing about the price fixing by the oil companies..

People are mad but have no one they trust.  The Conservative attack ads against McGuinty as the ‘Taxman’ made the point but Tim Hudak’s Conservatives did not benefit.  Hudak’s team played the bigotry and division cards and divided the province—rural against urban.  McGuinty took the north for granted and handed it to Horwath and  her NDP team.  He is premier of a house divided.

How do you predict the outcome when only half the eligible voters bothered to vote?  It came down to who was motivated.   People had plenty of opportunity to vote and yet only 600,000 people bothered to vote on the many available days of advance voting.  These advance voters were knowledgeable voters a well as those working on the election either for returning offices or for parties.

How did we expect people to vote positively when there was no leadership.  McGuinty is a wus and a dull, uninteresting party leader and premier.  The only cause he has every championed successfully is all-day kindergarten.  He is paying for renewable energy with a ponzi scheme.  He is not a liberal but a whig, mired in the 19th Century.

But Tiny Tim Hudak scared nobody.  He pandered to the extremists on the right.  He should keep the speech writer who did his speech on election night.  It was the first honest speech he made.

Andrea Horwath disappointed us.  She could have cashed in on the latent Layton sympathy but never got her act together.  She produced no clear message.  She had pissed off teachers going in to the election, lost the auto workers and then maligned the hospital workers—some unionist!  Only the north bought her.

Our late mother-in-law had many little sayings from her childhood.  She used to say “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.”  And that sums up the Ontario Legislature.

-30-

Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in New | Comments Off

Rebuilding the federal liberals.

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

A colourful mailing came from the Liberal Party of Canada the other day.  It reminded us of the standard mailings by Members of Parliament with the questionnaire slanted to get you to agree with their party’s policies.  This one was also a plea for money to help rebuild the party.

But the mailing failed to tell you what kind of Liberal Party it is rebuilding.  If it is to rebuild the same Liberal Party that has been in self-destruct mode since the year 2000, why bother?  With a leadership convention two years away, the party actually has little time to determine the path on which it wants to be led.

As it stands today, the Liberal Party of Canada is an uncooperative gathering of right and left wing Canadians who stand for individual rights.  On that one thing, they seem to agree.  They do not all agree on how to protect individual rights but they certainly put individual rights ahead of the property rights of the extreme right wing conservatives.  Real liberals also put individual rights ahead of the collective rights that are important to a socialist.

It is the need of the individual for health care, education, housing and employment equity as well as individual freedoms in religion, expression, opinion and orientation that must always concern the liberal.

A true liberal can be described as a social democrat.  As this is a direction chosen lately by so many of the New Democratic Party, there is a natural tendency for the two parties to merge as a left of centre political entity.  It can hardly be a forced marriage or a marriage of convenience.  It can best be an open door.

In Ontario in recent years, we have been witnessing union organizations whose membership has moved the union into supporting liberal positions.  It has led to growing union support for the Ontario Liberal Party.  These unionists are forced to work as a collective but share the concern for individual rights as liberals.

In a truly liberal country there is no need for a monarchy or for such structures as an appointed Senate.  This means, we must work towards a new constitutional structure for our country.  And that will be the most interesting challenge for Canadians.

-30-

Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in New | Comments Off

Ontario sinks to new lows in debate.

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

If you were surfing, trying to find a rerun from the Charlie Sheen Two and a Half Men series around seven last night, you might have come across a new version of the show.  This one features a lady named Andrea Horwath in the Charlie Sheen role.  A prissy chap named Dalton was playing the amiable side-kick role of Allan Harper while an aging adolescent Tiny Tim struggled with the fat, dumb kid persona.  As a political debate, it had little to recommend it.

Ontario deserves better.  Mind you, NDP leader Andrea Horwath looked spiffy—a great hair do, good make-up job, nice dress, discreet jewellery—all spoiled by one of those trade-mark manish suit jackets.

For sartorial yuck, you could hardly beat Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s tie.  It must have been his daughter’s choice.  We now know the kid’s problem is not her parentage.  She is color blind.

It was Premier Dalton McGuinty’s role to look like suitable premier material.  And he did until those other two started to beat the crap out of him.

Horwath surprised everybody with her performance.  That nice lady can also be mean and bitchy.  Her remarks about pumping beer in North Bay sure did not do much for her trying to look like a premier.

It was everyone jumps on Dalton night.  Horwath was snide about his no-show at some Northern debate and Hudak was calling him a liar.

Dalton got in a good one on Tiny Tim about calling new Canadians foreigners but Tim denied it despite anyone who watches television news having heard him.

The three of them proved to be really bad communicators.  The people who prepped them for the show should all be shot.  Shotgun delivery of statistics is meaningless.  They did better with anecdotal stuff but what Andrea’s 18-year old son was doing on a skateboard is a good question.

Dalton actually smiled when he gave an aside to Andrea about her brother or someone getting a job at Honda.  Other than that one human moment, he is still in need of a personality transplant.

Tiny Tim came across as a bobble-head doll with a tape recorder up its rear.  He just bobbled along in his own weird right-wing world, spouting inanities.

By the time the show was over, we decided that it was a form of self-abuse that we did not need.  Anyway, we voted last week.

-30-

Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and comments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Provincial Politics | Comments Off

« Older Entries